On the women’s side, top seed Marie Matrka defended her 2013 title and took her sixth singles crown overall July 19 with a three-set victory over second-seeded Amina Ismail, 6-7 (7-4), 6-3, 6-3.

This after playing both ends of a softball doubleheader earlier in the day.

“Softball is really not that hard,” Matrka said. “It’s a lot of standing around. This was a lot harder.”

Matrka dug a deep hole for herself early, falling down love-5 in the first set before breaking Ismail’s serve in four straight games while holding her own to force the tiebreaker.

She pulled a muscle in her abdomen in the second set and stopped reaching on her serve, just tapping the ball in play and relying on her baseline game to stay close. Ismail led 3-2 in the second set when she went down to the clay surface, writhing in pain.

“My legs just lost feeling then I cramped up,” said Ismail, a recent Kings High School graduate headed for Xavier University. “I couldn’t move too well after that. But I’m still pretty happy (with the tournament) overall.”

Matrka said Amina is a great player. “After she got hurt, she started really going for my serves; she was a lot more aggressive because she couldn’t get back and forth as well. She hit some amazing shots, but I held on,” she said.

“It’s pretty special for me at 30 years old to beat somebody who’s just 18 with talent like hers.”

Men’s winner Doug Matthews of Madeira has a special connection to the tournament, too. It’s named after his grandfather.

After falling to finals opponent Wyatt Lippert - the top seed and two-time defending champion - in the 2012 semifinals and the 2013 championship match, Matthews was happy to have 19-month-old daughter Kinsley help him hoist the silver cup he earned with a 7-6 (8-6), 7-5 victory over Lippert.

It was Matthews’ third career singles title and the second time he’d won it on his mother’s birthday.

“This is my best win for a long time,” he said. “When you haven’t played in a tournament from this time last year to now and still improved the way I did, I’m pretty happy. I was thinking about (Lippert) all year, probably more than he was thinking about me.”

Matthews served for the match in the in the 10th game of the second set, playing a serve-and-volley strategy that allowed Lippert to hammer four winners as Matthews charged the net, breaking his serve and tying the match at 5-5. But Matthews broke Lippert back the to seize control again.

In the 12th game Matthews mostly stayed back while faking some moves to the net. When the final point went long as Lippert attempted a baseline forehand, Matthews flung his racket, raised his arms and ran to the net to hug his opponent.

“I’m running the city championship,” he said. “There’s a lot of history here, a lot of really good players have won it. Scheduling is the hardest part, but it’s worth it for watching such good tennis all week.”

The 2014 Met singles tourney featured 44 players in the men’s bracket and 16 in the women’s. While those numbers are down from their heyday in the 1980s and ‘90s, McRae said they marked a 15-percent increase in participants from last year’s championships.